FreeBSD

FreeBSD is one of the most popular branches of the BSD project, and one of the oldest open-source branches. It emphasizes security through design and offers a featureful packaging toolchain.

Installation

Grab an image from the official repositories. You likely will want either the -memstick.img or the mini-memstick.img images. The former is larger, the latter requires an internet conection during installation.

dd the image onto your device, and the rest will explain itself.

Administration

Operating System Updates

Updates to the operating system are handled by freebsd-update(8).

Each minor and major version release will have it's own upgrade notes. The general process is:

# run current version updates
freebsd-update fetch
freebsd-update install

# fetch new version updates
freebsd-update upgrade -r MAJOR.MINOR-RELEASE
freebsd-update install

# reboot
shutdown -r now

Software

See here for details on software and packages.

Services

FreeBSD uses BSD init for services. To enable SSH, edit /etc/rc.conf with:

sshd_enable="YES"

This enables the service. To start it immediately, run service sshd start.

CategoryRicottone